Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.
…
Bug-Ōhi cried in agony, sparks flying from her body and explosions rocking her frame, before she was consumed by a tremendous blast, the Great Divine Insects flying apart from each other and smashing into the surrounding buildings, severely damaged and immobilized.
In a flash of light, the Bugrangers tumbled out of their mecha, their costumes vanishing to reveal their battered, bruised, and bleeding forms, and they looked up in fear as the shadow of the towering dark robot that had struck them down in their unified form fell over them. The colossus split in two, and a pair of figures landed before the defeated heroes; one and a slender, curvy female clad in a black suit resembling a spider, the other a hulking brute in a purple suit like a scorpion.
"D-dammit," Goro cursed. "How… How are they so strong?!"
"So… This is the power of the Great Divine Arachnids," Manti gasped.
"Shit… Can't even cast… A single spell…" Ariel hissed, struggling to remain conscious.
Shin sighed. "And things were going so well, too… Should've known it wouldn't last."
Clenching her teeth, Nushi struggled to her feet. "We're not… We're not done yet!" She insisted, even though she looked like she was going to pass out at any moment. Trembling, she reached for the microprocessor atop Coccinella's head. "Hen…Hensh-"
Bored, the black spider stretched out a hand, firing a mass of webbing which struck Nushi in the chest and knocked her over, bound from head to toe in unbreakable threads.
"LOVEBUG!" Ariel shrieked.
"Don't worry," the black spider said, firing four more bursts of webbing from her hands, wrapping up the rest of the Bugrangers. "I wouldn't dare separate the five of you. Parasitica is paying for a package deal, after all."
"Aranea, stop this!"
The two dark warriors turned their heads as Queen Apista approached, a sword resembling a bee stinger in one hand, her other clutching the scar on her chest. From the way she winced with every motion, it was clear she was in tremendous pain, but from the determined look in her eyes, it was clear she didn't care.
"Your Majesty," the spider said lazily. "So you finally deigned to get off your throne and try to fight your own battles. I guess now that you don't have any more so-called heroes to hide behind, you have to show yourself or else lose face. Don't want your subjects to think less of you than they already do, after all."
"Aranea, I don't understand," Apista cried, heartbroken. "After everything my sister has done, especially to your people… How can you possibly be helping her?!"
Aranea shrugged. "I've got no fondness for the bitch, but she's got something I want. And given how you left us all in the lurch to hide on this backwater mudball, I can't say I won't take some measure of pleasure in turning you in as well."
Apista flinched at this, Aranea's words clearly harming her worse than her injury. "It wasn't… It wasn't like that…"
"Don't care," Aranea said dismissively. "Now, I suggest you drop your sword and surrender."
Apista clenched her mandibles, trembling with hurt, a look of betrayal on her face. "And whyever would I do that?"
Aranea nodded to her companion. His barbed tail twitched, then suddenly shot sideways, smashing through the window of a nearby building. A moment later it retracted…
Wrapped around Philia, the stinger inches away from her face! Apista gasped in horror, dropping her sword instantly. "Philia!"
"Mom! Mom, don't give her what she wants!" Philia begged, only to cry out as the scorpion tightened his coils, constricting her body.
"You're going to surrender, and come with me willingly," Aranea said calmly. "Or else Antares will sting your daughter right before your eyes. Parasitica wanted her alive, but I doubt she'll mind too badly if I bring her a corpse; she can still serve as a playmate for her daughter."
Apista shot Aranea a horrified and disbelieving look. "You… You're bluffing! Philia… she's your sister, you would never hurt her-"
"That's a funny thing for you to say, considering what your sister did to you." Aranea nodded at Antares, who loosened his coils slightly… Only so he could draw back his stinger, in preparation to drive it into the princess's face-
"NO!" Apista shrieked, quickly getting down on her knees. "Don't hurt her!"
"Mom, no!" Philia wailed.
"Your Majesty!" The Bugrangers, Divine Insects, and Great Divine Insects cried.
Aranea chuckled darkly, flicking a wrist and ensnaring the Queen in her webbing. "I always catch my prey." She tapped the spider-shaped device on her wrist, causing a hologram of Parasitica to materialize before her. "The job's done. They're all yours."
The evil queen cackled madly. "At last… I have finally won!"
…
Several hours earlier…
…
Aranea's slumber was disturbed when a spider crawled over her face.
This wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence, seeing as how her vessel was full of spider drones, and they were often crawling all over the place and especially loved staying in close contact with their "mother," but this was a particularly persistent spider, and it happened to be speaking in the voice of her retainer, Antares.
"My apologies for waking you, milady, but you asked me to inform you when we were arriving at our destination," the rough, gravelly voice of the Scorpioni rasped from the drone's speaker.
"I'll be right there," she replied quietly, so as not to disturb the slumber of the six beautiful concubines sharing her nest with her.
As the spider climbed off of her and went about its business, Aranea smiled affectionately at the six women who had, in the span of a few weeks, managed to wriggle their way into her heart. She gently kissed each of them on the forehead, pricking them lightly with her fangs as she did so to inject them with a mild sedative which would help them sleep for a little longer. Noticing how Aria was trembling, her lovely features twisted up in fear, Aranea added a little something extra to her dose, smiling as the former slave relaxed, her features softening as her nightmares were replaced by more pleasant dreams.
"Sweet dreams, my loves," she whispered softly as she carefully extricated herself from her consorts' clutches, gently nudging them with her extra limbs so that they started cuddling with each other to fill the void created by her absence. "Enjoy your rest for just a little longer. You deserve it."
Once she was fully out of the nest, she spread all eight of her limbs, psychically calling her drones to her. Hundreds of red pinpricks of light flickered to life around the room as her drones started crawling from the shadows and dark corners of her quarters, scurrying all over her body, their tiny legs tickling her as they diligently consumed every trace of biological detritus or impurity covering her form, leaving her spotless and smelling like fresh silk. It wasn't quite as pleasurable as a proper bath – especially when being attended to by her beauties – but she doubted she had time for one right now.
The spiders crawled off of her, their task completed, and more descended from the ceiling on minuscule metal threads, gingerly clutching a scarlet cloak made of spider silk decorated in web motifs. Aranea allowed the drones to drape the cloak on her shoulders, swishing it around to cover her body, and extended her primary left arm, a much larger mechanical spider leaping from the web she had woven for herself against the wall and wrapping her legs around her wrist. "Let's go," she told the spider as she walked to the door, the aperture irising open as she approached and silently closing behind her.
Extending her extra limbs from her back, she elevated herself off the ground and rapidly conveyed herself down the many dark, twisting, web-strewn quarters of her ship, the ever-present spider drones scurrying out of her way as they went about their various tasks about the vessel. In a matter of minutes, she passed through another door and found herself on the bridge, where Antares was waiting for her, staring through the red-tinted main screen at the seemingly endless expanse of webbing they were traveling through to reach their destination.
"ETA?" She asked, taking her place in the throne-like command chair in the center of the room, her extra limbs plugging into sockets arrayed around the seat, causing her eyes to light up as the cybernetics in her body interfaced with the ship's systems.
"A matter of moments," he rumbled, turning to regard her with his few remaining eyes. "Are you certain of this course of action?"
Aranea spat a glob of webbing into her hands. Mashing her palms together, she started rubbing and kneading the substance before eventually pulling them apart to reveal a complex iridescent skein which seemed to somehow have more than three dimensions to it. Her eight eyes scanned the tangled weave for a moment, then she nodded and flexed her fingers, ripping the web to shimmering shreds. "I am."
She hesitated, then tapped the mechanical spider on her wrist, causing it to project a hologram of a younger version of herself, along with Queen Apista and Philia. The three of them looked very happy. "I am," she repeated a little more quietly to herself.
Antares nodded but said no more.
The view through the main screen changed as a jagged hole abruptly tore open before the ship. They passed through, the vessel's inertial dampeners making the translation from webspace to realspace as smooth as possible. Now, they were looking at a blue and green planet with a single moon…
Completely surrounded by a massive, misshapen armada of malformed vessels covered in fungus and giant centipedes. Aranea narrowed her eyes in disgust, while Antares bristled. "The Swarm…" He snarled.
"We knew they would be here," she reminded him.
"Yes, but this many?" He murmured darkly.
Their view of the Swarm armada blockading that poor planet was suddenly replaced by a far worse sight, as the screen was filled by the unpleasant visage of the despot people all over the universe were learning to fear; Queen Parasitica II, ruler of the Infestation Empire Swarm. "Unauthorized vessel, this system and all in it are property of the Infestation Empire Swarm," she said cruelly, a wicked grin splitting her face. "Surrender now and be-"
She blinked, doing a double take. Her right eye suddenly uncurled, revealing itself to be a centipede, which extruded itself and regarded Aranea quizzically, seemingly just as surprised. "Wait… You have an Arachide vessel. And your markings…" Her eyes widened in astonishment. "I know you. You are the Crown Princess of the Ascendancy! What are you doing so far from home, little Weaver?"
"I have no home, thanks to you," Aranea said coolly.
Parasitica burst into laughter. "Oh yes, that's right, I destroyed your civilization, didn't I? How is your mother doing? Is she still breathing?"
Antares snarled, clenching his pincers, tail raising. Aranea shot him a look, and he grudgingly backed down. Turning back to the screen, Aranea said, "She's doing just fine, thank you for asking. As to your earlier question… Well, being the Crown Princess of a people who've lost everything doesn't exactly pay the bills. I've turned my talents to bounty hunting to make ends meet."
"My, my, how the mighty have fallen," Parasitica leered as her centipede retracted back into her eye socket. "And I suppose you have come here to… Do what, exactly? Avenge the Ascendancy? Collect the no-doubt sizable bounty on my head?"
"Hardly," Aranea said coolly. "What you did to the Ascendancy, the Hive, and everyone else who has stood against you has made it clear that there is no stopping you."
Parasitica grinned, finding this hilarious. "So you've decided to join the winning side?"
Aranea shook her head. "I'm a bounty hunter. I don't pick sides," she insisted. "It's simple. You have something I want. In exchange, I'll give you something you want… Your sister, niece, and the Bugrangers."
Parasitica stiffened, then narrowed her eyes, all business now. "I'm listening."